[blparent] What-You-Got Casserole

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

I had a funny little misadventure in the kitchen this morning.  Sarah, now fourteen months old, has figured out how to get into the carousel cupboard where my dry and canned foods are stored.  I didn't know just how disorganized the canned goods had gotten till I opened up a tin of what I thought would be fruit cocktail.  Wrong!  It was beef stew, and it smelled awful, not because it was bad but just because it wasn't what I expected.  I put the stew in a plastic tub so Gerald could take it to lunch.  Then I again went on the quest for fruit cocktail.  I came up with the can that just had to be it, since I could identify some of the others as soups, and a few of the labels I could read with my Optacon.  I opened the can, once more expecting fruit cocktail.  Wrong!  This time is was corned beef hash.  I should have known when the can didn't slosh much, but I was sure I'd been dead on.

Anyway, the point is, I decided that the only way to keep from wasting food was to make a casserole.  So the stew, the hash, a left over half of a baked potato, and a left over pork chop cut in tiny pieces, along with some mushrooms, went into a baking dish.  I'm going to bake it up tonight, throw some Cheddar cheese on top, and hope for the best.  If it tastes good, I might even pretend I meant to make it that way.  If it's yucky--well, life with a baby has its interesting moments.

Jo Elizabeth

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."--James Baldwin